


under the olive tree

by zxc_keito



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Royalty, F/M, formerly, it's kind of royalty?, well...petra's a princess i guess, winterrw2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 06:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9422438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zxc_keito/pseuds/zxc_keito
Summary: Day 1 // Rivetra WeekIn search of a sword that could end the tyrannical rule of his uncle once and for all, Levi, God of War, meets a young girl named Petra. In her former life, she was a Princess, killed as collateral for her lover's revenge. Levi had vowed to avenge her death...but to do so would mean sacrificing her once more, for the sword is embedded in her spirit.Losing her once was torture enough, but losing her again? There truly was no merciful god.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was heavily inspired by the k-drama Goblin with a bit of weird, mashed-up Greek mythology added in. I might continue this story at a later time but first I have to update Wolf Child (sorry about that!!). Things are really busy and this was the only chance I had to write something for Rivetra Week.

It was winter. All the trees had been stripped bare of their fruit, and all the ground was covered in an unbroken blanket of snow, stretching for miles around. It was that time of year – he must be searching for her again. The people crowded around the marketplace in the centre of the city, hoping to haggle for more food to store for the long, barren nights ahead with whatever they had left. The air was clouded with all the breaths they took to plead and barter. Petra could hardly see a thing through all the smog.

She felt her father shift in his seat beside her, carefully huddled in three thin blankets. He spared his daughter a weak smile as more customers hurried past their stall. After all, who would be willing to buy olives during the bleak midwinter? Olives were a luxury few could afford in the capital, let alone the marketplace. But her father had insisted on making the effort of putting up a stall, right next to another man and his daughter selling potatoes.

 _I had a dream_ , he had said the night before. _The night you were born… the oracle told us that on your nineteenth winter, good fortune will befall us in the marketplace_.

She should’ve stopped him then. It was no secret that her father’s mental stability had slowly started to wear away ever since her mother’s death. This was a crazy idea.

 _But why olives, Papa?_ she had asked, in an attempt to appease him somewhat, hoping to uncover his true intentions. _The rich hardly make trips to the marketplace during winter. We have a few apples we can sell from the last harvest. Surely that’ll give us more profit  ̶_

Petra sunk lower into her chair as she remembered the way he had glared her into silence. The very same eyes that she’d inherited, previously dulled by the pain of loss and bereavement had instantly flared into two bright flames.

_You will do as the gods command._

Even though she had no business believing in gods, she couldn’t have restrained him then. She tugged at the end of her left sleeve, revealing a mark resembling two wings crossed over the other. It had been with her since birth, and her parents used to boast about it all the time – _The mark of good fortune, and wisdom!_ – but it was only since her nineteenth birthday a few days ago that she had noticed that one wing had darkened in colour.

It was strange, but she didn’t want to waste time dwelling on something that could probably be explained trivially.

She sighed, covering her wrist once more and kept looking on, almost painfully, at the empty circle that surrounded their stall, and the buzz of silence that encompassed it.

“He will come,” her father coughed loudly, jolting her from her trance. “They said he will. He’ll come looking for you. For the olives.”

He continued to cough and wheeze into his blankets when Petra tried to console him, wrapping the blankets tighter around his shoulders. “I’ll wait for him, Papa,” she whispered, shushing the old man’s mantra into quiet whimpers. “Just get some rest. I’ll wait for him.” _Whoever he is_ , she thought to herself. Was he a customer whom her father had arranged to meet on this particular night, here? Were all the olives reserved for him?

If that were the case, she wouldn’t mind. He must be filthy rich to afford all the olives they had carried arduously to the capital. But nothing else mattered except for the reward.

“I’ll wait for you,” Petra whispered again, moving back to her seat. She had given her father an extra blanket, leaving her shivering in the open cold. She felt her skin rise into small bumps as she hugged herself tighter, patiently waiting for this stranger’s arrival. “I’ll wait for you.”

* * *

“Are you ready, then?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing for the last three fucking centuries?” Levi snorted in reply, adjusting the belt of the mortal clothes that Erwin had so graciously given him. Every year it was the same. They did nothing to help him blend in to the smelly crowd of peasants that teemed the marketplace. “There’s almost no point in wasting time pushing and shoving against mortals for a sword that will supposedly help me kill Kenny. A sword that, may I add, I have not seen in all three hundred years of my loathed immortality.”

“So why do it?” Hanji asked amusedly, entering the throne room. She passed him a green cloak on her way to Erwin’s side. “You could just…stay? And wait for next winter.”

Levi sent her a menacing glare. “He killed her,” he spat, diverting his gaze back to Erwin, who had been watching their tirade with mild interest.

“You’ve killed many of his,” said Erwin, raising one thick brow in question. “You’re the God of War, you should be unfazed by death, especially one that transpired long ago.”

“And you’re the God of Wisdom, giving me nothing but the same shitty advice year in year out.”

“ _Okay_ , folks,” Hanji calmly chimed in, clapping her hands to restore some semblance of order between the two rival gods. “Let’s keep the focus on the task at hand, shall we?”

“Petra has been dead for three hundred years,” Erwin said bluntly. Hanji winced beside him.

“It was unjust,” Levi scowled. “She played no part in my mistake.”

“A mistake that could have been avoided had you not been blinded by your hatred of your uncle.”

Levi clenched his jaw. Speechless.

Memories of the night of her execution flashed before his eyes like a photobook. The sword that had pierced her stomach. The thunderous echo of her knees falling to the marble floor tainted with her spilled blood.

Her silken copper hair slipping from his fingers as he watched the breath leaving her body with vacuous grey eyes. The muted fire in hers.

The paralysing anger gnawing at his chest, on the left side of his lungs.

No interminable length of time would be enough to mourn her.

They stood glaring at each other for what seemed like an eternity, the tight rope of tension above them ready to break at any sudden move.

“ _Guys_ ,” Hanji pleaded, breaking the silence. “The winter chills from the mortal world is enough. You don’t have to go turning this palace into a winter wonderland too.”

It was Erwin who retracted first at the sound of her voice. Levi continued to glare for a few lingering moments before acknowledging Hanji once more. Something about the way Erwin had spoken to him made him wary of what lay before them. There definitely was something different about tonight. It was in the way Erwin had brought up her death so conspicuously and brashly in front of him, of all days. He had never discussed her in such an apathetic tone.

But there was only one way of knowing for certain when Erwin knew something more than he let on.

The God of Wisdom never broke eye contact first.

* * *

Petra waved at the few familiar faces that had stopped by to greet her. They had apologised for her father’s rapidly degrading strength, though it did more to anger her than comfort.

One of her friends had even brought her a few pieces of bread from their stall. Although it had hurt her pride to accept it, it was enough to see her father’s small smile as he wolfed it down in a matter of seconds.

Now he was asleep again and the people in the market were gradually dispersing.

And still, ‘he’ had not come.

Petra sighed, wondering why she was still so gullible to her father. Perhaps it was her unending supply of hope that fuelled her hours-long wait for a stranger she was beginning to doubt existed. Maybe she should keep playing along for a little more before leaving. Even the potato family had already left, leaving the area surrounding their stall even more barren than before.

 _There is a time to persevere and a time to be resolute and give up,_ she told herself.

“Pet…” She turned her head towards her father, who had been intently staring at her for a while now.

“Yes, Papa?”

“You have such lovely hair,” he mused sadly. “I wonder who gifted it to you.”

“Surely it came from mother, before her hair turned brown,” Petra replied with a grin. She loved to remember her mother. The scent of the broth from her special soup that wafted throughout the house, the timbre of her voice that was the envy of even Calypso…

“You look nothing like your mother.” Petra frowned hearing those words. It was like swallowing a stone that came to rest at the pit of her stomach. “Papa…”

“Shall I tell you a story?” he interrupted before she could reply. “Just like when you were younger, the story about the War God’s lover?” He coughed uncontrollably for a few seconds.

“Maybe next time,” Petra told him. “We’ll pack up soon and you can get some warmth back home.”

“ _No_.”

She stopped at the sight of him. It was the same one as last night, with the fire rekindling in his eyes. More than anything, she was afraid. She had heard her friends’ stories about their grandparents or their parents succumbing to insanity in the days leading up to their passing, that the apparent life that had sprung into them momentarily was a cruel deception invented by the God of Death himself.

She silently prayed, against all her beliefs, that he would not take her father away from her so soon.

“I never told you the ending of the story,” he continued, almost wheezing. “It was a tragedy.”

She had heard the story many times. Even the ending where they lived happily ever after. It was a fairy tale her father had written to calm her down on the nights when the heavens warred and lightning cracked the sky. The young, naïve girl she had been believed in every single word – the love story of the War God and the Princess blessed by the God of Wisdom. How could such a fairy tale be a tragedy?

“She was killed, her stomach pierced by the sword of the God of all Gods,” said her father, as if answering her thoughts.

Now her full attention was on him, her curiosity piqued by the rest of the story.

“The War God’s half-mortal siblings were sent to fight a war far away. Knowing they would be of no match, The War God tried to convince his uncle to send himself in their stead, but he refused.

His siblings returned to him dead, mauled and ravaged to death by bears and cannibals.

Furious and consumed by his rage, he challenged his uncle to a duel. It rained and stormed for months in our world as they fought, their strength and endurance matching equally to the other’s.

The other gods became frustrated. Mortals were dying at an alarming rate. There would be no-one to serve them any longer.

The God of Wisdom then proposed that the first to disarm the other would then be able to choose one thing from the other. The War God chose for his uncle’s demise, knowing that there was no way to bring back mortals, even half-mortals, from the dead, and his uncle chose for the Princess.”

“He lost…” Petra whispered to herself, hugging her knees. She lowered her eyes to the ground, finding herself immersed in the story. How worried must he have felt, staking the life of someone he loved so much for vengeance. And now, knowing how it all ended with the Princess’ demise…

“It was a tragedy,” her father repeated. “On the anniversary of her death, every winter, the War God travels to the palace where she ruled in search of a weapon which could avenge her death and atone for his mistakes.

For centuries he searched every corner of the Earth until an oracle told him that his uncle had once forged a sword that could slay any god, even the God of all Gods himself, and that it is only that sword which can light the path to vengeance.”

Petra stiffened in her seat. “It was the one he used to kill the Princess, wasn’t it?”

Her father nodded solemnly. “He could not find the sword in the realm of the gods, and so he resorted to searching for the sword in our world, convinced that his uncle would hide it somewhere obvious yet hidden: in the Princess’ homeland.”

Petra was silent as her father let out yet another string of coughs, contemplating his story. It truly was a tragedy. Was he still searching to this day or had he given up once he realized the search was futile? Did the sword even exist anymore? What if the very person who forged it destroyed it before anyone could use it against him?

She shook her head vigorously at the flailing thoughts invading her mind. It was just a story. Gods, or at least of the good kind, did not exist. Gods who fall in love with Princesses and spend their immortality looking for a way to avenge them did not exist.

Petra glanced over at her sleeping father once more. She could not take this anymore. No-one was coming. The olives were better off being used by themselves at this rate. And the wind was picking up dangerously...

Petra stood up. They needed to go back home.

* * *

 “Due to your little lovers’ spat, we arrived late and now most of the stalls have packed up and left,” Hanji huffed, crossing her arms in annoyance at the sight of the near-empty marketplace.

“It’s better this way,” Levi marched on, making his way towards the stalls that were still open.

“What’s the point in that? Weaponry isn’t in season right now,” Hanji shouted after him, picking up her pace to catch up with the two gods. “All I see is fur and more fur.”

 _This is futile_ , Levi thought to himself as his scowl deepened with every passing stall. Hanji was right. Anyone who ever sold weapons or treasures would probably have packed up after selling a few to some daring hunters and the like. The market began hours ago. They should’ve been arrived at that time. _Bloody Erwin_.

Come to think of it, the ‘wise’ god had kept silent throughout their journey to the mortal world, always staring ahead, as if sensing something.

“Erwin,” Levi halted in his step, narrowing his silver eyes at the taller man. “You're hiding something.”

Erwin remained silent, pensive, and staring into the distance.

Hanji pressed on. “Erwin?”

Finally, he opened his mouth. “It started a few days ago.”

Levi pounced at his words. “Explain. Now.”

Erwin craned his neck to meet his eyes. “Someone has my mark.”

“Are they here? In this place?” Hanji excitedly chimed in. Erwin nodded.

Levi pursed his lips. “Find them.”


End file.
